Cabin Fever
by whiskeyandnight
Summary: With the Courier out of commission, the companions are left to wait in the Lucky 38 without her for the first time. One week won't be so bad, right?
1. The Six Steps (Day Zero)

**A/N:** Sorry about the premature update, I didn't realize that deleting the previous chapters would do that, lol. Anyway, this fic has been rewritten, and will update on Fridays!

Also, the events of this fic take place immediately after the first chapter of _Zero Days Without Injury_. You don't have to read that to really understand what's going on here, but... it'd be nice.

* * *

It's been a _very _long night for them.

After the Courier is rendered more or less concussed in Cook-Cook's camp by a surprisingly well-armed Fiend wielding a brick, Arcade has to make the executive decision to take her to the New Vegas Clinic to be examined and monitored. It's the safest option, really, because he knows that concussions require a certain kind of care that he isn't confident enough to offer.

Their night turns from a simple bounty hunt to a suddenly not-so-simple scramble to figure out what their next move should be.

Eventually, it falls into a series of steps.

* * *

STEP ONE

… is something they have to debate over: do they first take the Courier to the clinic, or do they try to turn in the head?

On one hand, her groaning and heaving is getting worse by the minute and it's clear that she needs medical attention as soon as possible.

On the other hand, McCarran is already nearby, and is actually on the way to the clinic – not to mention that _none _of them are keen on carrying Cook-Cook's bloody head around for any longer than they need to.

They settle for going to McCarran first. Arcade gives the Courier some water and a shot of Med-X for any pain she might be experiencing; if the nasty reddening cut on her head is anything to go by, she isn't lacking pain.

"We're going to stop by McCarran, and then take you to the clinic," Arcade informs her, slowly and clearly. He wipes a wet rag across her forehead to clear away the blood that's begun to drip down.

If she has any argument to give them, it's not coherent enough for any of them to understand.

STEP TWO

… is working out how they'll actually get the Courier from the Fiend camp to McCarran to the clinic. At first, Arcade tries to test out how well she can walk, only to quickly discover that she can hardly keep herself upright let alone walk in a straight line, and the few stubborn attempts she makes end in her falling right back on her ass. Cass laughs as she watches the younger woman stumbling around and spewing nonsense, but the sharp glares that Arcade shoots at her are enough to make her stop – though not without huffing and muttering unintelligible words under her breath about him.

She gets it, though, despite her dislike for being _scolded _like a child – verbally and non-verbally – by the doctor. Arcade is genuinely worried for the wellbeing of the Courier, and so, in her heart of hearts, is Cass, for that matter. They all know the Courier's brain has already undergone a great deal of trauma just from being _shot in the head_, and while it's amazing that she has retained all of her cognitive functions after that, Arcade isn't sure how much more it can take before she's left with permanent brain damage.

It's why he's so adamant that they take her to the clinic. They have some of the best doctors and equipment that the Followers have in the Mojave chapter, and given the Courier's already sour history with head trauma, he doesn't feel comfortable leaving her in the care of anyone else. It helps that she's already done a great deal to help the Followers recently; he's certain that they'll take care of her and see that she makes a smooth recovery.

In the end, Boone silently and gently scoops her up into his arms, mindful of her rampant nausea by keeping his movements from being too quick and jarring. She seems as content as she can be with the position and rests her head against the sniper's chest, but Arcade keeps a careful eye on her to make sure that she doesn't fall asleep.

STEP THREE

… is setting up a series of basic, non-verbal signals in order to properly communicate with the Courier. The process of carrying her along with them is only further aggravated by the fact that she can barely talk, and if she thinks she is, it comes out as nothing more than pure gibberish to the rest of them. This doesn't pair well with the extreme nausea and vertigo she's experiencing; as a result, she can never adequately convey to them that she's about to hurl. Arcade thinks mournfully of his sullied boots, which will undoubtedly smell of vomit for a _long _time, no matter how hard he tries to scrub the odor away.

They develop a "system", if it can even be called that, that is straightforward and simple: instead of trying to use garbled words that make no sense to anyone involved, the Courier just slaps Boone on the chest as many times as she has to until he lets her down to do her business. It's a system that works, and no one else gets vomit on their shoes that night.

STEP FOUR

… is turning in the bloodied, stinking, _disgusting _head that no one wants to carry.

"I can't," Boone says, holding out the _armful _of Courier he has. The woman gives an aptly timed groan of misery and he nods as though his case has been made.

And it has, Arcade and Cass can both agree, but it doesn't mean they _like _it.

"No," Arcade says before he and the caravanner can even lock gazes.

"Well, I'm not doing it either." Cass crosses her arms and turns her nose up as if that's that.

They have a silent stand-off for a few minutes because neither of them is willing to bend and admit defeat. Every now and then they each glance at the head that Boone has left on the ground for them to deal with. Each time they look into its vacant eyes and its dirtied and bloodied _neck hole_, they grimace and their resolve becomes more steadfast.

The Courier lets out a small yell, and whether it's because she's in pain or just making loud noises because she can, it startles both of them out of their stubborn glaring. Just when Arcade realizes that this is time wasted that could be spent getting the Courier the _medical attention _that she _really needs_, Boone kicks a stick at them.

"Break the stick," he tells them. "Whoever gets the smaller piece has to carry the damn head."

Arcade and Cass share a look before shrugging. Arcade picks up the stick and holds it out for Cass to grab the other end. On the count of three, they both close their eyes and _pull _until they hear a decisive _snap_.

With trepidation, they slowly open their eyes to see the result.

"Yes!"

"_Fuck!_"

Cass holds the head by the hair all the way to McCarran, at her full arm's length and wearing a permanent scowl. She's thankful that she wore gloves, because the head seems to get even _nastier _the more she looks at it.

She might just burn the gloves all together. Maybe.

Luckily, McCarran isn't too far from the South Vegas ruins – although in Cass' opinion, it's _not close enough_. She gripes the whole time and almost throws the head at Major Dhatri when they finally make it to the airport and find him. Despite the late hour, he's still up and patrolling near the entrance to McCarran, which is just another stroke of luck since it means they don't have to hold onto a decomposing Fiend head until the morning.

"I would say that I hope it wasn't too much trouble, but evidently," the major eyes the Courier, whose head lolls back against Boone's shoulder, "that isn't the case. I'm sorry for whatever might have happened, but I can't thank you enough for what you've done."

"Yeah," Arcade sighs, when none of them seem to know what else to say. With the Courier out of commission, he quickly realizes that _they _have to do all of the talking now. He taps his foot nervously before adding, "If we could get the payment for that head now, we _really _need to get her to the New Vegas Clinic."

"Of course." Dhatri leads them to a small station, where he pulls out a small box that he hands to Arcade. Upon shaking it, Arcade can hear caps jingle around. "250 caps for Cook-Cook's head. Tell her to talk to First Recon if she's going to complete the set and go after Nephi. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to lend a hand."

The Courier rouses at the mention of First Recon.

"Bessy," she mumbles.

Arcade leans closer in an attempt to understand her better. "What was that?"

"Bessy," the Courier repeats. "Hafta… till Bessy. Be_tssssss_y."

"Corporal Betsy," Dhatri clarifies, his own confused frown smoothing out. He gives her a soft smile. "Yes, I'll be sure to tell Betsy what you've done for her. Feel free to drop by and talk to her yourself once you're feeling better, though. I'm sure she'd appreciate that."

The Courier mumbles out something else, but it trails off into something indistinguishable. She goes to close her eyes again and Arcade snaps lightly in her ear to keep her awake. She weakly smacks at his hand.

STEP FIVE

… is getting the Courier to cooperate once they finally, _finally_ reach the clinic. She refuses as much as she can to be let down from the sniper's grip onto an examination table. The Courier can sometimes be finicky when it comes to being checked and prodded at by doctors, as Arcade had quickly learned, and a goddamn _concussion _that renders her virtually useless to everyone including herself is no exception. Luckily, the vertigo proves to be a bit of an asset in this situation, and makes it nearly impossible for her to thrash and run and _fight_ like she undoubtedly wants to.

Eventually, though, they manage to actually calm and sedate the incoherent woman and settle her into a plush chair to wait while Arcade talks, in soft and hushed tones, with Dr. Usanagi about the circumstances of what had happened.

"And you said she has a history…?" Usanagi asks, hastily scribbling down notes onto a clipboard.

"With head trauma, yes. She was shot in the head about," he pauses to count, but he really doesn't know the precise date or details of the night the Courier was shot, "two months ago? Roughly."

Usanagi's pencil pauses and she stares at him, wide-eyed. "_Two_ _months _ago?"

"I know," Arcade agrees. "That's why I brought her here."

"Where in the head was she shot? Please show me."

They walk over to the dozing Courier, who's being kept awake by another doctor talking to her about nothing in order to continue stimulating her. Arcade kneels down and gently sweeps the Courier's bangs out of her face, uncovering the vicious scar on the left side of her forehead.

"Oh, shit," Usanagi breathes, just as the Courier slaps Arcade's hand away and grumbles with a frown. Her hair falls back into place and the scar is hidden from sight once more.

"Yeah."

"I'm amazed that she's still _alive_. It's very rare that someone is able to survive that kind of trauma. Who was her doctor?"

"Someone in Goodsprings, I couldn't tell you the name."

"I'll have to ask when she's recovered."

"Speaking of…," Arcade begins, and Usanagi quickly nods and directs him to the side, away from the Courier again.

"Right," Usanagi says lowly, reading through her notes. "Well, I definitely want to keep her here for a little while. Lord knows what this could do to her brain, what with the previous damage that's been done. We'll run a scan, monitor her, and do some basic cognitive tests to see if anything's been disturbed. If anything unusual turns up I'll send someone to let you know, but otherwise she'll just have to rest and we'll see what happens."

"How long will that take?" Arcade asks warily.

Usanagi shrugs. "However long it takes for her to heal. Longer if the process is hindered in some way. We really don't know. A rough estimate would be about a week to a week and a half, it just depends on the severity of the injury and the health of the individual."

Arcade can only nod at that, because it's something that he already logically knows. He's just having trouble applying it to the Courier, who they've never been without for so long. He spares a glance at her, sitting in her chair murmuring gibberish and actual words alike to the doctors and clutching a metal bucket that they're given her for the nausea, and decides that he'll just have to deal with the wait time if it means that she'll be okay.

When he sputters over his promise of eventual compensation for the care and offers up the box of 250 caps that they'd just received from Major Dhatri as an upfront payment, Usanagi gently lays a hand on his shoulder and tells him they can work those details out later, when he and the others aren't so obviously exhausted. The smile she gives him is warm and reassuring, and though he already knows of Usanagi's medical experience, he feels much more comfortable with leaving the Courier in the clinic's care.

And finally…

STEP SIX

… is the quiet walk back to the relative safety of the Strip. The hour is late and they're all tired, and without the Courier to act as their middle ground, no one bothers to make any attempts at conversation. Arcade almost wishes Veronica had come along to help with the bounty; she chatters more than the Courier does, more than _anyone _does, regardless of whether or not anyone is actually listening or responding to her.

It helps, sometimes, to have someone who can fill the lengthy silences.

When they finally reach steps of the Lucky 38, ignoring the flashing neon lights and the loud tourists and the faint music that makes up the sights and sounds of New Vegas, it's already just past three in the morning. Arcade is ready to crash, but he has to endure the ride up the elevator with _Victor _before he's able to.

Veronica, who is still awake for some reason, frowns at the distinct lack of Courier as soon as they arrive to the suite.

"Were you waiting up for us?" Cass asks, a sly grin forming at Veronica's resulting blush.

"Maybe I was bored. And lonely. And worried. Shut up."

Cass only laughs as she heads off to the bedroom. Over her shoulder she calls, "At least you're honest with yourself."

Veronica shushes her and waves her away with a _be gone with you _gesture.

"You guys took a lot longer than I expected," she admits, turning back to Arcade. He looks ready to collapse. "And where's…?"

He gives Veronica a brief summary of what happened and where they left the Courier. Her frown has deepened by the time he's done explaining.

"How long will she be gone?" she asks.

"The doctor, Usanagi, said probably 7 to 10 days, as long as she's recovering normally," Arcade tells her tiredly. "But there's really no saying for sure."

Her eyes widen slightly and grow distant with thought, but she only nods and says, "You should go to bed."

And he's never heard a better suggestion than that.

He flops down onto one of the double beds in the guest room without ceremony or grace, just barely able to shrug out of his coat and pull his soiled boots off. As his eyelids slide shut, he hears Cass getting up and grumbling over the smell of vomit wafting from the boots. He lets out a wordless grunt of acknowledgement into his _very _comfy pillow when Cass declares that she's throwing his boots into the farthest bathtub in the bathroom for him to deal with later.


	2. Accustomed (Day One)

Later that morning – _much_ later, in fact, so much later that a glance at the clock tells him that it isn't even _morning_ anymore – Arcade wakes up in a slow, hazy daze. He isn't sure why. Half of him wants to go back to sleep. The other half tells him that it's time to get up, time to get ready, time to ask the Courier what her plan for the day is-

_Oh_, he thinks, _but she isn't here. _The thought, the sudden flash of memory from the night before, only serves to speed up his waking process, something that the half of him that yearns for more sleep cries out in protest of.

It takes him twenty minutes of staring up at the ceiling, listening to the creaks and whirs and soft noises that pervade the suite, before he finally decides to get out of the comfort of the bed. He stands, stretches and hears several satisfying _pops, _and reaches for his worn Followers coat that had landed on the cream-colored couch next to the bed.

His hand falters when he remembers that, with the Courier gone, he probably won't need it. For once in what seems like a _very_ long time, he has nowhere to be; he isn't being hauled out of bed at _ungodly_ hours to accompany the Courier in whatever the endeavor of the day is, doesn't have to act as storage space for her as she obsessively collects supplies and knick-knacks that they already have _too much_ of, and doesn't have to watch over her every move to make sure she isn't pissing off too many of the wrong people.

There's no alarm or hustle to leave. It's a sudden shock of _nothing _after only two months – and god, he can't believe it's only been that long – of what feels like _everything_.

He meanders aimlessly through the suite, almost at a loss for what to do with himself. He loses himself in no thought in particular, and it shows.

In the kitchen, Cass watches him curiously as he chugs a bottle of moderately-cooled water like his life depends on it. She considers making a joke about his unusually sluggish and quiet state, until she realizes that she doesn't really care about what could be going on in his head and occupies herself with the contents of the twin fridges. If Boone notices anything, from where he sits at the long table with his feet propped up on the next chair over while reading an old comic book, he makes no attempt to address it.

Across the table from Boone is today's newspaper, which Arcade takes without bothering to ask if someone was reading it. He doesn't hear Cass' noise of offense as he drifts back out of the kitchen with the paper tucked under his arm.

Veronica is in the rec room when Arcade walks in, sitting on the floor in a small nest of throw pillows. She's busy playing with Rex, who wags his tail furiously with every excited word and sound that comes out of the woman's mouth. She glances up from her cooing and praising to greet the doctor as he walks in. He gives her a small wave and goes to the corner table. As soon as he sits down, he lays the newspaper down on the table in front of him and begins reading the front page.

It isn't anything new, and Veronica is content to continue talking to Rex. The silence otherwise feels okay to her, something that she's used to with sharing the suite with several others, but there comes a point where it turns… _too _silent.

She gives Arcade another glance and realizes that he hasn't turned a single page in the past few minutes. He hasn't bothered to touch it _at all_, and instead she finds that he's just staring at the radio, unmoving and in a daze.

Veronica gives him a few more minutes to snap out of it and make some attempt at actually _doing_ something – it's honestly a bit disturbing, watching him be so quiet and still. When he simply continues to stare at the radio with an unjustified level of intensely, as though it will eventually relinquish to him the meaning of life, she clears her throat.

"You gonna turn it on?" she asks, keeping her tone nonchalant. She smiles at the dog in front of her, whose tail is thumping heavily against the carpet as she generously scratches the base of his ears and behind his brain case. Arcade blinks and turns his head to her.

"What?"

She quickly moves her head away to dodge Rex's excited slobbering and nods at the radio. "The radio. If you're not going to read the paper, you can probably hear the same stories on the radio. Which is meant for, y'know, listening to, not watching. That's what makes it different from televisions."

"I know that," Arcade says with a small frown.

"Sure doesn't look that way," she sings playfully. "You've just been staring at that thing for, like, five minutes."

"I have?" Arcade asks, blinking again. The surprise in his voice is nothing short of genuine. He looks down at the newspaper and realizes that with the few minutes he'd spent staring at it, he still doesn't know what the reports for the day are. He'd just given up on reading about two sentences in and had begun to stare into space. "Huh."

Veronica frowns, just the slightest bit, as she begins to wonder why he's being so _weird_.

"Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" she asks, laughing.

"Apparently," Arcade replies, and he takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes. "I don't know what to do about it, though."

Veronica pauses in her petting and gives him an odd look. Then, her eyes brighten in realization, and she lets out a small, drawn-out _oh _before she rolls her eyes at the doctor. Though Rex had calmed down some as he listened to them talk, he perks back up as soon as the woman turns her attention back to him.

"_You_ may be the dog, but _Arcade _isthe little lost puppy here, isn't he, Rex?" She gently grabs the dog's head between her hands and pulls him forward to give him a quick kiss between the eyes. The metal of his brain case is cool against her nose, but she pays it no mind. "Yes he _is_!"

"What?" Arcade turns fully in his chair at that remark, finally snapped out of his weird trance. Veronica inwardly cheers for that, at least. "What is _that _supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you know _exactly _what it means."

He lets out a strange sort of laugh and stands, newspaper abandoned as he begins to slowly pace back and forth in the room.

"I suppose you're right," he says under his breath, and when he doesn't say anything more, Veronica decides then to just leave him be in favor of entertaining the impatient near-lapful of dog she has.

She laughs when, as she pulls her hands away from scratching and petting the dog, Rex gives her a loud bark in protest. She repeats the process multiple times, showering him with attention before taking it all away, and every time Rex lets out an impatient bark, she laughs even more. At one point she leaves the dog hanging for so long that he begins tapping at her limp hands with his paw in a silent request – _demand _– for more pets.

Meanwhile, Arcade has ceased his pacing to stand in front of the small snow globe display that hangs on the wall next to the door. He absently picks one of them up – the one from the Mormon Fort, incidentally – and shakes it until it contains a miniature snowstorm before placing it back down onto the shelf. He watches the white flakes wildly spin around and around in the small dome. When they're done and settled and the snow globe is clear once more, he picks it up and shakes it again.

"This is weird," he finally mumbles with a slight shake of his head. It's more to himself than anything, but he slowly turns around. Veronica gazes up at him curiously, watches as his face scrunches in confusion. It's an amusing look for him, she decides. He meets her gaze, and asks, louder, "Why is this weird?"

Veronica gives him a small shrug. "You've grown accustomed to her face," Veronica tells him immediately.

The corners of his lips quirk upward and the wrinkles in his brow smooth out. "I didn't know you liked musicals."

"Learn something new every day," she quips, flashing him a sly grin.

"Apparently so."

"It's true, though," she continues, returning to her gentle stroking of Rex's neck. "You're so used to her being here that it's weird now that she isn't."

"I honestly don't know what to do with myself," he murmurs with a small nod, facing the snow globes once more. "It's _ridiculous_."

Veronica merely shrugs. "I'm with you, man. I've been with her longer than you have, and Boone even longer than that. It's a bit of an… odd change for all of us. There's nothing wrong with it."

"I suppose so," Arcade concedes, distractedly. He picks up each snow globe one at a time this time – there are three in the collection so far – and shakes each of them, content to watch them all simultaneously whirl around aimlessly. "It's just… strange. You know? Going from sitting around, doing virtually nothing with the Followers for so long, and then she comes out of nowhere and suddenly you're doing _way too much_, and now…" He trails off, lost in his own train of thought, and Veronica almost thinks that he's gone back to his weird silence. Then his head whips around and he stares down at her again, and asks imploringly, "You don't think I rely on her too much now, do you?"

"I dunno." She gives him another shrug, absently letting Rex lick at her palm. "About as much as the rest of us, I guess."

"Oh, _great_," Arcade drawls, turning back to the display in front of him, and the sarcasm that practically _drips_ from his voice is as much appreciated by Veronica as it is irritating.

"Listen," he jumps when _something_ thumps weakly against his back, "I can tell you what you _want _to hear, or I can tell you the _truth_."

He gives Veronica a look of faux annoyance over his shoulder, and then does a double-take when he realizes that she's armed with another small pillow that's ready to hit him in the face. There's a mischievous glint in her eye that doesn't bode well for him.

"Throw pillows aren't actually for _throwing_, you know."

"Anything is for _throwing _if you _throw it_. Now, if you're done sulking -"

"I am _not_ -"

"- _sulking_, you should go and find something to do.," she finishes, leaving no room for argument. "What about a plant experiment? I'm sure there's plenty of interesting stuff you could try."

Arcade genuinely considers the idea, rubbing his chin lightly in thought. The fake snow is settling again, covering the cheap plastic dioramas inside, but not enough to obscure their surprisingly still-vibrant colors. The globes are clear, and he decides that he's satisfied to let them stay that way.

"There are the contained spore samples we collected from Vault 22 last week," he suggests hesitantly, looking to her for some sort of approval. "I mean, obviously we already _have _the old data from it, and it could be incredibly _dangerous _should it somehow be released, but as long as it's kept sealed I'm still interested in analyzing it."

Veronica gives him an encouraging smile, despite the fact that she has no idea what the _hell _he's talking about. "Alright, go do that potentially life-threatening stuff, then. Wouldn't be all that different from everyday life here, anyway. But if I catch you _sulking _around again, I'm going to make a game out of throwing these," she shakes the clutched pillow at him threateningly, "at your head, _all day_."

Arcade lets out a sharp bark of laughter and nods his agreement.

"Yes, ma'am."

When he walks out of the room, Veronica sighs and focuses her attention back on Rex. The dog becomes excited again, tail thumping heavily against the pillow she'd thrown as he crawls as far into her lap as he physically can. When she just sits there and does nothing but stare at him, he lets out a small _boof_ and insistently works his head underneath one of her hands. The way he gazes up at her with big expectant brown eyes makes her heart melt.

"Alright, you big beggar," Veronica laughs, finally taking his hints and scratching wildly through his coarse fur. Rex devours her attention and affections gratefully, even rolling onto his back to give her access to his partially metal belly.

_It must be nice to be a dog_, she thinks as he wiggles about in what can only be joy.

Veronica keeps at her indefinite job as a petting machine, but gives another, drawn-out sigh as she gazes out the door and listens to the various sounds of the others doing whatever it is that they're doing around the suite.

"I'm calling it now, Rexy. It's going to be a _long _week."


	3. Robots, Dogs, and Robot Dogs (Day Two)

"Alright, I'm just gonna come right out with it," Cass says, after watching ED-E float aimlessly in and out of the room for fifteen minutes. "That thing kinda gives me the creeps."

Veronica closes her book slightly, holding her spot with her finger, to turn down the radio.

"Who, ED-E?"

Cass gives a small affirmative hum as she takes a sip from her bottle of whiskey. She enjoys the comforting warmth of the liquid as it burns down her throat and settles in her core before leaning down over the edge of the pool table to line up her shot. Since they began the game, Boone had somehow managed to stay _just barely _ahead of her, and it's just been pissing her off _more _and _more_.She's determined to change that with her next move.

"What?" Veronica asks incredulously, brow furrowing slightly. "Little ol' ED-E?"

"I'm going to have to side with Cass on this one," Arcade says without bothering to look up from the way he idly flips through the pages of an old magazine. "It's definitely creepy."

"But he's so cute!" Veronica insists.

There's a sharp _crack_ that sounds through the room as the balls on the pool table collide with each other. Cass swears loudly when the green striped ball she'd been aiming for hits the corner of the pocket instead of sinking in, and proceeds to bounce back uselessly.

As she not-so-patiently waits for Boone to take his turn, she gently rests her chin on the end of her pool cue and gives Veronica a small shrug.

"I don't know. It just seems weird to me, how it just floats around beeping like that all day."

She pauses and makes a show of tilting her head, listening out for something into the suite. Sure enough, once they all take pause to listen in with her, they can hear a soft continuous electronic beeping coming from somewhere in the suite. Cass tilts her head forward towards Veronica in a motion that says _I rest my case_, and returns to watching Boone as he quietly and critically examines the pool table.

"He's just lonely," Veronica defends. "I think he's talking to himself."

"And that's pretty fucking weird, if you ask me," Cass says. Boone finally takes his shot – and misses. Cass lets out a sharp laugh at him.

"I'm telling you," Arcade hums under his breath, "Lake Mead. EMP grenade."

"Also," Cass continues, sparing Veronica one last glance before she starts moving around the table to see what Boone has left her to work with, "why do you keep calling it 'he'? It's a robot. It has no gender."

Veronica frowns; she's never considered that before. "Well… yeah, I guess," she mumbles, picking thoughtfully at the end of one of her sleeves. "I just don't like calling him an 'it', though. It feels weird; he's such a lively little thing. I don't want to hurt his feelings."

Arcade sighs heavily and drops his magazine down on the table before giving Veronica a look that betrays just a hint of irritation.

"Again," he says patiently, "it's a _robot_. I don't think it _feels _much of anything. Especially not an eyebot."

The remark doesn't offer any comfort to Veronica. If anything it only serves to make her frown deepen. "What's wrong with eyebots?"

Arcade pauses and shifts uncomfortably in his seat, glancing out the open door for any sign of ED-E floating around, before lowering his voice and saying, "They're made almost exclusively to spew propaganda and spy on people for," he freezes for a moment, unable to backtrack and unsure of how to properly continue without… revealing anything. He swallows and mumbles, "For, for… anyone who needs that… sort of functionality."

Cass looks up from the green-topped table to raise an amused brow at him, conveying a silent _you're not fooling anyone_, but she chooses to not say anything about the doctor's bullshit.

"_Regardless_, it's still a robot, and that means it doesn't have much to feel about _anything_," he concludes quickly. He can feel the blood rushing to his face, and abruptly grabs his magazine. He brings it up to not-so-subtly cover his flushed face from view.

Veronica delicately chews on her bottom lip, surprisingly displeased with the idea that a cute little eyebot like ED-E could have no emotions or opinions.

"I think you're wrong," she mumbles, but not without a childish pout. She leans her elbow on the round table and rests her chin on her fist, thinking it over as she watches Cass sharply drive her cue into the white ball. Two striped balls – purple and yellow – sink almost simultaneously into separate pockets. Cass lets out a loud whoop and punches the air in victory.

"Suck on _that_, soldier boy!" she taunts with a wide grin, prodding at Boone's stomach from across the table with her cue. He rolls his eyes and swats the cue away.

"Don't get cocky," the sniper tells her, ominously simple and simply ominous, as he begins to once more analyze the new setup of the table.

Veronica pouts in silence for just a few minutes more before deciding that – especially with Arcade's blatant animosity for the _innocent_ eyebot – the argument just isn't worth pursuing. She chooses instead to reach down, on instinct, to stroke at Rex's ears, which is something she often finds herself absently doing for comfort. Her hand sweeps through nothing but air and she looks down to the floor with a frown.

"Hey, have you guys seen Rex?" she asks suddenly, glancing around the room for any sign of their beloved dog. It occurs to her that she hasn't seen him at all throughout the day, and the realization irks her. Rex is almost always by her side; even more so now that, after just one day, the dog seems to understand that the Courier will not be returning soon.

Arcade comes out of his hiding – now without the flush of embarrassment – to look around as he murmurs, thoughtfully, "I can't say that I have, actually."

"I fed him early this morning," Boone offers, too focused on the careful positioning of his cue to be fazed by the Veronica's concern. "Haven't seen him since."

"What if he got in the elevator at some point?" Veronica wonders out loud, growing more and more worried as every potential scenario involving the dog's absence, from the very possible to the very impossible, flits through her mind. "What if he accidently got out of the casino? What if he's stuck on the Strip with the drunk tourists and belligerent soldiers, or what if he _left _the Strip and-"

"He's lived in Freeside for years," Arcade gently reminds her, careful of the slight rising panic in her tone. He gives her a reassuring smile. "They'd take care of him out there, _if _he could have even managed to get out there, which is _very _unlikely, mind you."

"Besides, the elevator hasn't been up or down all day," Cass mumbles distractedly. She sucks in a sharp breath as Boone pulls his arm back and brings it forward with precision and force. The _clack_ of packed resin colliding with packed resin is loud in the otherwise quiet room as the balls bounce off of each other and the woolen walls of the table. Two solids disappear into two separate pockets. Cass gapes at the smug sniper in outraged disbelief.

"Oh, you're a little _shit_!" she blurts incredulously, toeing on the border of _bewildered _and _furious_. The whiskey is, admittedly, making her just a _teeny _bit more ornery and _irritable _than usual – a fact that surprises exactly no one.

Boone only smirks and gestures to the table with a grand sweeping motion. His demeanor betrays nothing but pure satisfaction.

Cass wants to punch him. Just a little bit. Right in his stupid shades.

But first, she needs to _strategize _better; it's time to get _serious_, despite how little time is left in the game for her. Like _hell _is she going to lose to Mr. Wears-His-First-Recon-Beret-Everywhere-Even-Though-He's-Not-in-the-Damn-Military-Anymore. She shoots him one last glare, takes a deep swig of her whiskey, and prowls around the perimeter of the table, calculating.

Veronica stands then, so abruptly that Arcade can't help but jump slightly in his seat. He coughs, embarrassed, and gives her a cautious look.

"You… alright?"

"Oh, yeah," she assures him quickly, "I'm just going to see if I can find him. Rex. He could be, I don't know, lonely. Maybe sick." She gives him a sheepish look, picking at the stray strands of her sleeve again. "I just want to be sure that he's okay. This is so unlike him."

Arcade sighs. "If it'll make you feel better."

"It will." Veronica briskly walks out of the room and out into the foyer, softly calling Rex's name to coax the dog come out to her.

"Bet it's on purpose," Cass calls after her, as a fleeting afterthought. The only time she's ever been unable to find a dog is after they've torn up some shit that they're not supposed to, or something. "Bet he's hiding from us, for some reason."

* * *

"I fucking hate it when I'm right," Cass groans.

"Good thing that seems to be a rarity, then," Arcade replies smoothly, raising a brow at the caravanner. Cass gives an obnoxiously fake laugh and glares at him. He crosses his arms and expectantly looks at each of his three roommates, waiting for a decision to be made.

They're all standing in the foyer of the suite, in front of the elevator and engaging in a silent stare-down. Their gazes are all equally stubborn and challenging, none of the four willing to offer their aid or be enlisted by the others.

It's quite the stand-off, but it isn't doing anything to solve their problem.

As such, Arcade breaks first.

"One of us has to clean it," he says finally.

"If you care so much, _you _do it." Cass crosses her arms right back at him, mimicking his posture and issuing further challenge. "Besides, you guys are supposed to be the ones to take him out every few hours. It's pretty much _your _fault."

Veronica – not without a little bit of guilt, because it's more or less true – rolls her eyes and lets out a long groan.

"Oh, for the love of – _fine_, you big bunch of babies,_ I'll _do it," she says. She points two fingers at Cass and Boone. "But one of _you _has to get him out from under her bed."

She's only mildly annoyed by the whole situation, in reality. Granted, she's happy that Rex isn't _sick_ or anything, and in hindsight she – _they _– really should have thought more about the dog's needs with the Courier gone, but that doesn't make finding a pile of _crap_ in the guest bedroom suck any less. Especially when Veronica had to go and calmly report her findings to the others, who were _none too pleased _by the discovery.

Her heart had ached when she'd decided to check the Courier's room as an afterthought, only to find a whimpering glow coming from underneath the large bed. She couldn't coax him out from his hiding, and eventually decided that he would come out on his own, though she hadn't yet understood _why _he'd been under there nearly all day in the first place.

And then she'd walked into the guest room, and everything clicked with so much force that she figured, yeah, she'd probably be hiding, too. Especially with how feisty Cass can get on a daily basis.

"What?" Cass glances around at each of them, looking almost offended that it's even been suggested. "I can't, he doesn't like me."

"It's literally just because of your hat," Arcade tells her wearily as he takes off his glasses and rubs at the bridge of his nose. He's _always _telling the redhead that simple, peculiar fact about the dog, but she never seems to listen. _It's probably the alcohol,_ he thinks. "Everyone _knows_ that he doesn't like people wearing hats."

"Well, I like my hat, so he can _deal with it_."

"Then clean up his crap," Veronica retorts impatiently, putting her hands on her hips.

"You just said that _you_ would!"

"Yeah, so _you _have to go get him! It's one or the other, Cass!"

"No way," Cass declares, sticking her nose up in the air. "I am _not _getting bitten at by a cybernetic dog with a rhyming problem again. And in case you didn't notice, there are four of us, and only _two _things to do! Why can't _you _go get him, _doctor_?"

"Because," Arcade steps over to Veronica's side, "I'm going to help her clean up after him. We want it done as quickly as possible – and to get the smell out of _the room where we sleep_ as soon as we can – so it'll be better this way."

Veronica smiles at him, grateful that she doesn't have to deal with dog shit all on her own. She'd always wanted a pet, and she absolutely _adores _Rex, but the Courier is always the one who takes him out for walks and to do his _business_. Veronica had never been too keen on that part of the pet-owning job, and although she'd known that she'd have to suck it up at some point, a stand-off with a semi-drunken Cass is not at_ all_ how she'd imagined the conversation going.

Cass chews on the smooth inside of her cheek, stubbornly holding out for as long as she can and refusing to cave. After another moment of absolute silence, Boone lets out a heavy sigh.

"God, I'll get him," he grumbles, immediately pulling off his red beret and shoving it into his back pocket before walking into the Courier's room. "This was a stupid argument, anyway."

"Have fun getting your hand chewed off!" Cass calls bitterly after him. Veronica and Arcade continue to simply stare at her, with a hint of barely concealed amusement. She glares daggers back at them.

Veronica breaks her composure and grins wickedly.

"You're still mad that he _destroyed _you in pool, aren't you?"

Cass' cheeks turn beet red – the flush that exists because of the whiskey only makes it more intense – and she looks about ready to knock someone into next week. Rather than be afraid for her life as she probably should be, Veronica only grins wider, knowingly.

"Boone!" Cass roars, stomping after him into the Courier's room. "I'm helping you get that _fucking _dog out of hiding, and then we're having ourselves a _goddamn _rematch!"

* * *

**A/N:** [insert joke about the irony of robots being non-binary]


	4. Interrogations (Day Three)

"So this is… safe?" Veronica asks. It's about the fourth time the question has popped up, or at least Arcade thinks it is. He's heard it enough already from the voice in his head. He sighs from where he's kneeling on the floor setting up a large UV light fixture and gives her a _look _over the rims of his glasses.

"If you're so worried about _safety_, you really shouldn't have encouraged me to do this. Hand me the wrench – the small one, yeah. Thanks."

"No, I know," Veronica says, glancing at the small biocontainment unit sitting on the desk next to her. Inside, through a translucent barrier, she spies the small, closed Petri dish that Arcade won't let her get a very good look at. She wonders how old all this equipment is, not to mention where he even got it from. "I just really didn't expect you to do it, you know, _where we sleep_."

"I need the computer," he explains simply. He stands and wipes his sweaty hands on his pants. He flicks a small switch and the light turns on, shining an incredibly deep purple color into the room. With a small gasp, Veronica tries to get a good look at the bulb, but it looks a little fuzzy around the edges and she can't get a clear look no matter how hard she tries focus. The light makes the white on Arcade's lab coat glow brilliantly.

"So, uh," Veronica steps back slightly as she watches Arcade move the light around to get it into the perfect spot so that it's aimed onto the desk that he's commandeered as his workspace, "how contagious did you say this stuff was?"

Satisfied with his setup, Arcade turns the UV light off again and sits down in front of the terminal. Resting his chin on his cupped hand, he begins reading through the large blocks of green text that make up the old research data from Vault 22.

"Very, according to the Vault data and the medical journals we found. And also, you know, all of the spore carriers that used to be the afflicted citizens of the Vault who tried to kill us while we were there."

He sees, out of the corner of his eye, Veronica take another involuntary step back – towards the door, to be more specific – and glances up at her.

"Of course, Lilith and I had gone pretty deep into that Vault, into the thick of where the spores had contaminated the place, and neither of us ever showed signs of infection. And believe me, I was looking."

Curiosity piqued, Veronica pauses in her steady retreat.

"How long would it take to show?" she asks.

"Anywhere from 10 to 20 days. Again, this is all according to the reports from the Vault's medical ward."

"And it's been about that long since you went in there," she notes with a puzzled frown. It gives her hope that the contents of the little Petri dish _aren't _actually going to turn her into some weird spore monster. She never got to see the creatures – and she's thankful for that – but her mind manages to conjure up some pretty nasty images regardless.

Arcade nods, pleased with her observation.

"_Exactly._ And yet, the spores _ravaged _the inhabitants of Vault 22. So I'm curious as to why they haven't done the same to us," he explains. He gestures to the setup of his experiment. "This is all just to be as safe as I can be with how little I have to work with, but I have a feeling that there's something that's making the spores weaker than they used to be, if not entirely ineffective in terms of infecting and taking possession of a host." He pauses to spare a glance at the unassuming Petri dish and laughs. "At least, that's what I'm _hoping_. If not, well, I have some fail-safes. One, really. In the form of a small flamethrower." With his foot he taps the aforementioned object where it sits on the floor, leaning against the leg of the desk.

"Right," Veronica says with a wary nod, like the ambiguity of the situation doesn't concern her just a little bit. Her feelings regarding these _spores _are all over the place, but she's confident in Arcade's ability to _not _kill everyone in the suite.

_Wait and see,_ she supposes.

She pokes at and examines the light and the biocontainment unit, fascinated by the process and procedure that Arcade has carefully laid out for this experiment.

"You're pretty good at all of this science stuff," she comments, picking up the breathing mask that's lying on the desk next to the terminal.

Arcade gives her a brief lopsided grin as he continues to scroll through medical records. "Does it look that way? It's not true. I assure you, I'm spectacularly average."

Veronica laughs mirthfully, cheeks dimpling. "Better than me, but I guess that's not saying much. Where did you learn these things?"

"With the Followers, mostly," he hums, clicking through file after file. "They have incredibly thorough archives. It's an amazing resource to have."

"Did you grow up with them?" she asks after a moment of silence, turning the mask around in her hands, touching the various bumps and ridges. "The Followers?"

"No," he says, with a small pause, "No, I didn't."

"How did you join?"

It's then that Arcade has to choose focus on Veronica rather than on the contents of the clinic files in order to makes sure that he doesn't accidentally let too much of his past slip out. He isn't going to _lie_, necessarily; he's just going to strategically dance around the truth. Just like he usually does.

"My family moved to the Mojave when I was a boy. I must have been in my mid- to late-teens by the time I joined the Followers."

She gives him a look that is filled with nothing but interest, and while he appreciates the thought, he would very much rather she leave soon. "Where's your family now?" she asks.

"They're… around," he says with nonchalance and a vague hand gesture.

"You've never mentioned them."

"You've never asked," he retorts, and he gives her a tiny triumphant smirk. Small victories.

Veronica rolls her eyes. "Fair enough," she concedes, gently placing the breathing mask back down onto the desk. She goes to stand behind his chair, and the way she leans forward on it pushes him forward slightly.

He waits for the inevitable follow-up, but she says nothing. He moves to continue reading from where he'd left off.

"So, where did you live before you came to the Mojave?" she asks suddenly, just as he's started to slip into a much more clinically focused mindset. He's barely able to restrain himself from sighing as he tears his attention away from the screen yet again.

"West of here," he answers simply; most of the time, no one ever cares enough to inquire further than that.

"California?"

"Yeah." Arcade is grateful to settle on such a broad answer. He hears Veronica huff behind him, feels the air ruffle his hair slightly.

"We're all from California. How boring," she whines. She wants to know more about other territories and what things are like outside of the NCR and the Mojave, but not even the travelers she'd meet during her supply runs for the Brotherhood can ever tell her much about what it's like outside of here. Very few portion of them come from the northern states, but too close to the Mojave for the conditions to be as different as she hopes to hear about. An even lesser few are familiar with Caesar's lands, and she always listened to those tales and descriptions with rapt attention.

"I don't think Lilith is," Arcade offers, smoothly taking the opportunity to turn the topic of conversation away from himself.

"No, but she never tells me where specifically. She always says 'east of here'." Arcade laughs openly at Veronica's poor impersonation of the Courier, and receives a light swat on the head. "She's like _you_."

Arcade shrugs. "I'm sure she has her reasons."

"Oh yeah? And what are _yours_?"

"You know," he turns around suddenly, "I _really_ need to get through these journals and reports before I decide on how to interact with the sample."

"You're so bad at hiding the fact that you're hiding something," Veronica tells him with a frown. She gives him another small swat on the head.

Arcade only shrugs again.

"Or I've just been reading the same sentence for the past five minutes. But sure, if that's what you want to believe, then believe that. Now, maybe you could go keep Boone company. I think I just saw him go into the kitchen."

* * *

Veronica slides a plate of cooling eggs and slightly burnt hash browns across the table before returning to the old – yet amazingly pristine and functional – stove.

"Thanks," Boone says quietly. He picks up the fork and simply holds it there, hovering in the air, unsure of whether he should wait for Veronica to join come him before he begins eating. It would be the polite thing to do, wouldn't it? Especially for someone as good-natured as Veronica, who had immediately offered to make him breakfast for lunch as soon as she'd walked into the kitchen.

He settles for picking at the food, occasionally taking small bites of the surprisingly fluffy yellow egg in an effort to at least appease his growling stomach.

"I've gotta say, I've always found the food up here better than what we have in down the bunker," Veronica muses lightly, pushing the contents of the sizzling pan onto a red plate for herself. She pauses and scrunches her nose, and adds as an afterthought, "Maybe we just have bad cooks."

"You should see the rations they give to soldiers," Boone replies.

Veronica picks up her plate, along with two carefully balanced glasses of cool water, and joins him at the table.

"It's better?" she asks as she settles in and lifts her fork.

"No. Worse."

She pauses in the middle of her first bite and gives him a blank look. "Oh."

Boone waits for her to start eating before he begins steadily shoveling food into his mouth. He makes a sound of appreciation and nods to, silent in his gratitude since his mouth is full.

She watches him, delighted with his never-ending favoritism for her cooking. She isn't all that, she doesn't think, but she can admit that the various tips and tricks she'd learned simply by hanging around the trading post have come in handy time and time again.

It's amazing how tolerant and even amicable people become when provided with a good, warm meal.

"How much worse is 'worse'?" she asks with an amused smile.

"Terrible," Boone says around a mouthful. He grimaces at the memory. "They mostly fed us meat, maybe some staling bread every now and then, but it all tasted like dirt."

"Why meat?" Veronica asks, genuinely curious and pleased with a chance at any form of conversation with the usually quiet sniper. Especially regarding his service in the military, which he's never entirely forthcoming about for reasons she probably can't blame him for. "Protein?"

Boone shrugs, stirring some egg and hash brown together.

"That's what they told us, but we knew better. It's no secret that they have trouble growing vegetables out here. And when they can, most of it goes back into NCR territory. The ration program was pretty shit, or at least it was during the war over the dam. Probably still is."

Veronica blinks. "Wow. Seems like the NCR can't decide on its priorities."

Boone snorts into his glass.

"I don't think you're wrong about that."

They share small grins, something that Veronica relishes in, and then they fall into a comfortable silence, with only the clinks and scrapes of metal utensils against ceramic plates filling the void. In another room, someone turns on a radio, and the calming music of Mojave Music Radio starts drifting softly throughout the suite. It makes them feel lazy, loose, and relaxed.

Boone spares a glance up at Veronica, for no reason in particular, and finds her watching him with her meal temporarily abandoned. There's a question sitting heavily on her tongue, and in her inquisitive grey eyes he can see a debate over whether or not she should venture to ask. His good mood begins to drop almost immediately.

"I wanted to know," Veronica begins finally, and Boone can already feel his muscles tensing up in grim anticipation, "Were you at Helios One?"

That… is not the question he was expecting. He stares at her blankly, bewildered, and taken off-guard.

"Uh," he takes a moment to collect his thoughts, and takes a sip of water to buy time. "No…no, I wasn't."

Veronica's shoulders sag just the slightest bit, and she frowns in barely concealed disappointment. She's always interested in hearing NCR accounts of what happened at Helios One, no matter how bitter most of them tend to be towards the Brotherhood. She finds it interesting to hear the story of something she'd lived through from the opposing side, although she'll _never _admit that to them.

Living with an ex-NCR soldier (and _1st Recon_, at that!) only serves to intensify her curiosity.

"Oh. Okay," she says reluctantly, picking up her fork again. She glances up at him as she stabs at her eggs. "So where were you? At the time, I mean."

"Helios One was in '76, right?" Veronica nods. "My unit wasn't part of that, but we had gotten our orders to head out here. We were getting ready for the war, at that time. The dam was more important than Helios One, so that's where they wanted our focus." He gives her an awkward look, followed by and even more awkward, "Sorry."

"No, you're fine," she waves him off with a small, bitter laugh. "Helios One was a waste of everyone's time, really."

Boone nods, a minute movement that's more out of discomfort than anything, and returns to staring at his plate. His appetite has steadily dwindled in light of the conversation, and he does nothing more than absently push the remaining bits of food around.

"So you fought during the Battle of Hoover Dam, then?" Veronica asks after a few moments of silence, which is not as comfortable as it had been.

Boone doesn't look up at her this time. "Yeah. 1st Recon was an important part of the retreat maneuver at Boulder City."

"I remember that. McNamara wouldn't even let any paladin scouting units out until it was over. Honestly, I think he was hoping the NCR would fail. He's got some serious grudges."

"I can imagine," the sniper replies lamely. Veronica watches him push his food around for a little while longer before she stands and offers to take his dishes.

"I'll wash, you dry?" she suggests to him cheerfully, balancing the plates and glasses in her arms. He simply grabs a small dishtowel and follows her to the sink.

As they clean, he waits for her to speak up again, like she is always prone to do. She looks thoughtful as she scrubs at the first plate, and Boone is certain that she isn't quite finished with their previous conversation. It makes him regret ever opening his mouth in the first place.

"Wasn't 1st Recon also at Bitter Springs, later on?" she asks finally.

And, _there_ it is, there's the dreaded question.

He freezes, face falling and becoming stone-like. His mouth draws tight, until it's nothing but a straight, hard line.

"Yes," he answers quietly.

"And you were there?" If she notices the way his grip on the drying rag and the plate tightens ever so slightly or that he has effectively begun to shut down, she doesn't bother to stop the line of questioning.

"Yes."

She hums sadly. "That must have been awful."

His grip around the plate he's drying tightens more, until his knuckles are nearly white.

"It was," he says, and the small utterance is hard to spit out.

"I've heard so many accounts of what happened," Veronica continues obliviously, setting down the other plate for him to dry. "Bad things about the Khans, bad things about you guys. A _lot_ of pointing fingers. It's hard to know which story is the right one."

"I think we're done here," he quietly, yet resolutely, growls. She finally looks up at him, examines his tense posture and the tight grip with wide eyes.

"Oh, wow, I'm sorry!" she hurries to say, immediately setting down the glass she's washing away at. She reaches out to touch his arm, to give him some sort of comfort or apology, but instantly thinks better of it. "I didn't realize – is that why you left the military?"

Boone sets the plate down on the counter harder than he means to, and Veronica jumps. He lightly grabs her by the arm – willing himself to calm down because she is more or less his friend and despite her prodding, he knows deep down that she means no real harm – and silently leads her out of the kitchen.

She doesn't make a sound of protest – she's too busy worrying over whether or not she's ruined her friendship with the sniper.

Boone stops in the doorway of the rec room, and Veronica turns to him, another apology ready to spill out. He holds up a hand before she can say anything.

"Thank you for lunch," is all he says – a tight grumble, obviously attempting to maintain some sort of composure – before releasing her arm and heading to the elevator. She watches him as he leaves to go wherever he's going, and then turns to the room to face Cass.

The older woman is sitting at the table, had been lightly humming along with the radio and picking at her nails before Veronica had been dragged in. She now simply stares at the younger woman, an equal mix of amusement and confusion playing across her freckled features.

"Hi," Veronica says, giving Cass a small wave. Cass takes pity on the poor, sulking woman; whatever she did to piss off Private Grump, she clearly feels bad about it.

"Hey."

"Are _you _going to be annoyed with me if I start asking you about your past?"

The caravanner scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Not really. Unlike everyone else that lives here, _I've _got nothing to hide."

Veronica grins. "Cool. You wanna play checkers?"

Cass smiles, genuinely, in return. She kicks out the other chair from where it had been tucked under the table. It's as open of an invitation as any.

"Sure."


	5. Minor Acts of Mischief (Day Four)

"Where is it?"

Cass clears her throat and straightens up in her seat, folding her hands neatly on the table in front of her.

"Where's what, Craig?" she asks, blinking unwittingly at him. Her voice is sickly sweet and unnaturally innocent. Next to her, Veronica almost can't contain herself and has to cover her mouth with her hands, but that might have something to do with the near-empty bottle of whiskey that sits on the table between them.

Boone narrows his eyes at the two of them.

"This isn't funny," he snaps.

Veronica bites the inside of her cheek as she struggles – and fails – not to grin. "You _look_ funny," she says with a barely-concealed snort of laughter.

"Y'know, that reminds me," Cass says thoughtfully, wagging a finger at the sniper, "Veronica wants to know-"

Veronica's eyes go wide and the flush in her cheeks deepens. "Oh my god, Cass, _no_," she pleads while laughing, leaning over and desperately attempting to cover the other woman's mouth.

Cass just gently smacks the younger woman's hand away and continues on to say, "Veronica wanted to know: do you shave your head, like, all the time, or are you just bald?"

"I'd really like my beret back, please," Boone rumbles lowly instead of even addressing the question. Cass lazily holds up her hands, palms-out in faux defense, and raises her brows.

"Hey, it's yours, my man," the caravanner promises, but then her lips twist into a devious smirk that hints at a stipulation. "You just have to answer the question."

Boone just continues to glare fiercely at them. He hears the echoes of the warning that Arcade had given him earlier that day, telling him to be extra cautious around the two.

"They're getting…well, they're bored," Arcade had told him, exasperated, as he'd worked to clean slobber and dog fur off of his glasses with the tail of his Followers coat. "And that means they'll do whatever they can to entertain themselves, and drinking was just the first step. For me, they thought it would be funny if Rex wore glasses. For you," the doctor had given him a wary once-over before pausing at the red beret that sat in its usual place atop Boone's head, before concluding with a simple and ominous, "Well, I'd just watch out, if I were you."

At the time, Boone had only taken the warning half-seriously. All he had was his rifle and his beret, one of which isn't all that necessary during their hiatus from action, and the other of which is _always_ on his person, at _all_ times. He'd figured that he wasn't as easy a target for the girls' rumored bullshit and the doctor was – he used to be a soldier of a squad based solely on _stealth_ and _alertness, _for shit's sake – so he just went about his lazy day as usual.

Never has he been so wrong. He'd dozed off at some point – a stupid, stupid thing to do, he realizes in hindsight – for lack of anything better to do until the evening. When he'd woken up again, not half an hour later, his beret was gone.

He stubbornly bares his teeth at the caravanner. "Screw you. I'll find it myself."

Cass' smirk widens into something far more wicked and gleeful than before. "It's not in here, I can tell you that much," she hints, and then she gestures for him run along and begin his search.

Boone spins around on his heel and storms off, leaving behind the girls' subsequent snickers and giggles, and wonders – not for the first time – why he puts up with this shit.

They're lucky that he's grown used to them, he thinks to himself as he begins looking through the other rooms of the suite. If it were anyone else, he'd be _far _more pissed off than he already is.

His first stop and primary concern is the bathroom, because friends or not, there will be _hell _to payif he finds his beret soiled in the waters of a toilet. He's both relieved and aggravated when a thorough search reveals nothing out of the ordinary.

Once he's certain that his beret isn't soaking away in filthy water – and if he doesn't fine it in one sweep of the suite, he's _definitely _going to check again – his next stop is the guest bedroom, where they all sleep whenever they choose to stay the night.

Arcade glances up from his terminal as the sniper whizzes by and gives Boone a sympathetic smile over his shoulder.

"They got you, huh?" he drawls lazily, chin resting in his cupped hand as he notes the distinct absence of a certain piece of headwear on the sniper. "I hate to say that I told you so, but, well…"

Boone gives him no response as he roughly checks under pillows and blankets and beds, within drawers and wardrobes, and on top of bookshelves and desks and chairs, all the while grumbling swears and threats _promises _under his breath. Arcade watches the younger man move quickly around the room – it's a lot more entertaining when it happens to _someone else, _he decides, and he can certainly understand the appeal now – before he turns back to the terminal with a sigh.

"I wish I could help you, but I really haven't been paying much attention to anything else," he tells Boone, although he certainly doesn't expect any sort of response. When Boone stands in the middle of the room, agitatedly glancing around for answers, the doctor adds, "You could check the dog? They like putting accessories on him. Apparently."

Boone decides to do just that. He rushes out of the room without a single word and finds Rex lounging in the kitchen. The dog perks up at the sight of someone to play with, but there's no red covering the blue glow of his brain case. Boone gives the dog a gentle scratch behind his ears, causing his tail to thump heavily against the floor, as he examines the kitchen to look for potential hiding places.

Rex follows the man around as he searches the kitchen, sniffing at his boots and wagging his tail in hesitant confusion as Boone opens cabinet after cabinet and even the twin refrigerators and stoves before disappointedly slamming them back shut. Rex cocks his head to the side every time he hears the man say quiet, heated words that he doesn't quite understand.

When Boone makes to leave the kitchen without bothering to retrieve a treat of some sort for Rex from within the fridges or on top of the counters, the dog makes a small _boof _noise, but the demand doesn't break through the ornery sniper's tunnel-vision focus.

Rex lets out a heavy breath when he realizes that he's getting no treats or playtime any time soon and goes back to lounging under the big table.

* * *

About half an hour of scouring through every possible nook and cranny in the suite later, Boone stands before Cass and Veronica again, defeated.

The two sit as primly as ever in exactly the same spots as before, having very obviously stifled their conspiratorial murmuring and straightening up in their seats as soon as he walked in. He notices that the bottle of whiskey is now empty and Veronica is having a _much _harder time containing herself.

He crosses arms and tries one last time to let his hard gaze bore through them, but the effect is unsurprisingly the exact opposite of what he wants it to be; they only snort together, wildly and childishly amused by his irritation.

Cass watches him with a calm, expectant expression, far more put-together than her partner. His mouth tightens into a thin line.

"I shave it," he mumbles in quiet defeat, angry at the stupid game they're playing, angry that he's been roped into it, and most of all, angry that he's _lost_. He just wants his goddamn beret back.

"Ha! I _told _you!" Cass exclaims immediately as she sticks a finger in Veronica's face. The younger woman rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out, but already she is beginning to giggle again. When she looks back to Boone, Cass' grin is wolfish. She rests her chin on her fist and watches him with rapt attention. "How meticulous of you. Old habit from the military?"

"Yes."

"How often?"

"Every few days."

"I never see it. You must do it when we're all asleep or gone."

"I do."

Her composure breaks and they snicker together, delighted with his answer. Boone feels just the slightest bit embarrassed, although he isn't particularly sure why or even if he should really care. He quickly overcomes it in an effort to continue glaring them into giving him his beret back.

"Alright, calm down, soldier," Cass laughs, standing and giving him a few rough pats on the back as she walks past him. "Follow me."

* * *

Cass opens the door with a grand flourish and bows to allow Boone inside. Veronica finds the presentation to be hilarious, apparently, and she begins snorting with laughter before he can even take one hesitant step into the room.

It's stupid. It's so unbelievably _stupidly_ stupid, and yet he instantly understands. Despite himself, even Boone can't help but let out a small huff of laughter.

On the Courier's large, plush bed sits a lone teddy bear, one of the many that the Courier likes to collect for whatever reason. It's been carefully propped up by fluffed pillows atop the soft, dark, and otherwise undisturbed bedspread.

On top of its fuzzy tan head is a familiarly worn and red 1st Recon beret.

It's honestly such a ridiculously stupid – and also, though he won't say it, somewhat cute – thing to see at the end of what has been a stupidly ridiculous experience. He makes his way to the side of the bed and yanks his beret off of the bear, snugly fitting it back on top of his head where it belongs.

He realizes, in hindsight, that he isn't sure why it had never occurred to him to check the Courier's room, which has remained closed since Rex's accident.

He supposes he has no one else to blame for that but himself.

"We knew you'd never think to go into her room while she was away," Cass tells him proudly, reading his thoughtfully confused expression. "Not unless you _had _to, at least. Still, you should've seen your grumpy-ass face."

He gives her a small, reluctant nod of admittance, and an even smaller smile; now that he has his beret back and completely undamaged, he isn't _nearly_ as fumed as he had been, he can appreciate the light-hearted nature of an ultimately harmless prank between almost-friends. He isn't as stoic and lacking in a sense of humor as he knows they think him to be.

"I guess you got me," he tells them, decidedly neutral, as he walks past them out the door. He presses the call button on the elevator and waits until the car arrives and the metal doors slide open. He pauses, holding the doors open with his hand, and looks over his shoulder at them. Without the sunglasses, they can clearly see the barest hint of mischievous, boyish threat in his eyes.

"Now I'll have to get you back."

With that, he puts his sunglasses on and calmly steps into the elevator, going to wherever he always goes in the evening to do whatever it is that he does. Cass and Veronica can do no more than stare after him blankly, almost at a loss for what to make of such an ominous farewell.

Arcade snorts from where he's leaning the doorway of the guest room, where he was carefully observing the three of them in case he needed to defuse any confrontations. He hadn't wanted to have to explain to the Courier, when she came back, why their resident sniper might be missing, but luckily for him it doesn't appear to be necessary.

For the time being, anyway.

"I don't know what that means," Arcade tells the two with a grin that only grows when they turn their blank stares to him, "but I'd sleep with one eye open from now on."


	6. Minor Acts of Payback (Day Five)

"Is that the box that was sitting on the counter this morning?" Arcade asks without preamble as he walks into the kitchen.

"Oh, hey," Veronica greets with a smile. "It's about time you stepped away from those weird spores of yours."

"I know. I needed to stretch my legs, and my back is killing me." Arcade emphasizes the point by stretching his long arms over his head and behind him, causing a series of sharp pops and cracks in his back. He groans in satisfaction before asking again, "Is that the box that was sitting on the counter this morning?"

Veronica pauses in her munching to examine the box in her hand; the simple design of white and red is pleasing to the eye, along with the elegant font that reads _Fancy Lads_. They've always been a favorite of hers.

She spares Arcade a not-so-sincere look of apology.

"Yeah," she replies, not bothering to finish chewing and swallow, choosing instead to talk around the mouthful of cake she has. "Were they yours? You really should know better than to leave these lying around, because any unattended Fancy Lads _will _be abducted by yours truly."

"No, I know, it's just." The doctor pauses and rubs his chin in thought as he carefully examines the small cardboard container she's holding. He wags a finger at it in a small, uncertain gesture. "Boone specifically told me not to eat those."

Veronica's jaw freezes mid-chew. "Why would he tell you that?"

"I, uh. I don't know. So _you_ would, I'm guessing?"

The mushy cake in her mouth turns bland as she slowly tips the box to examine what little is left. The cake looks relatively untouched, but that's probably the way it's _supposed _to appear to her.

She rushes to the nearest trash can and quickly spits out what's left in her mouth. She even goes as far as to scrub at her tongue with the rough sleeve of her robe.

Arcade comes up behind her and gingerly pats her on the back.

"I'm sure whatever he did, it wasn't _that _bad," he tells her, in what even he knows is a poor attempt at consolation. She'd already eaten more than half, after all. They all know how much she loves her Fancy Lads.

"Am I going to die?" Veronica whines to herself in self-pity, still bent and heaving over the trash can. "I'm probably going to die, oh god, I never should have messed with him."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic," Arcade says with a laugh. "I doubt he'd go _that _far over the harmless little thing you two did to him." Of course, there's no way of truly knowing with Boone, but he chooses not to mention that right now. He thinks about it more, about how he'd walked into the kitchen just in time to find Boone placing the box on the counter with no readable expression and no explanation, before quietly adding, "Come to think of it, he might have _wanted _me to tell you that…"

"What does that _mean_?"

"That'd actually make sense," he mumbles to himself, connecting dots that he really hadn't cared to connect before, "I mean, it's a good way to get back at you, by just messing-"

He's cut off by a sharp yelp that comes from the foyer, followed by faint and unpleasantly familiar whimpering. Veronica straightens up immediately with wide eyes, potential death-by-Fancy Lads forgotten.

"Rex," she breathes. She shares a look of concern with Arcade before running out to see what happened. She finds the dog curled up in a corner of the central room, whimpering with his paws over his snout and his ears flat against his head as he waits for the pain to subside.

"Oh, you poor thing." Veronica sinks down to the floor next to him and gently rests a hand on the dog's warm side, stroking along the length of his body in an effort to soothe him. She looks up at Arcade, silently pleading with him to do _something _to help, but he simply gives her a small, helpless shrug. There is nothing he can do, really, except for make sure that Rex is at least okay by the time he comes out of it.

"Do you think she'll be well enough to take him up to Jacobstown when she gets back?"

"If she isn't, she won't let it stop her," Arcade replies softly, kneeling down to join in gently stroking through the coarse fur. "Not with how frequent these episodes are getting."

Cass wanders out from the bathroom to investigate the sound, and quickly frowns when she feels the melancholic air that surrounds them.

"He alright?"

Arcade makes a _so-so _gesture with his hand. "Yes and no. Another episode. It's getting worse."

"Oh."

She stands there awkwardly, watching them gentle the dog until his whimpers eventually die down and his shaking subsides. She has a strange relationship with Rex; she's certain that he actually likes her, and she thinks him to be alright for a dog, but they have the whole _hat _thing between them that always makes it hard for them to interact. Eventually, she'll learn not to take it personally, but she still holds hope that he'll learn to just get over his weird thing with hats in the future.

Still, she isn't sure if he really needs her additional comfort. He seems to be returning to normal just fine with Arcade and Veronica. And so she simply stands and watches until they're certain that he's okay.

Even though Rex's pains eventually melt away for the most part, each episode seems to leave him more and more exhausted than the last. Instead of hopping back up and being his usual cheerful self, the dog opts instead to let himself be gentled to sleep.

No one says anything for a while. The mood is too solemn, ask they all think about how soon they need to get Rex to be checked out – and hopefully fixed – by the doctor in Jacobstown.

It's _too_ solemn for her tastes; despite her constant grumbling and drunken orneriness, Cass legitimately enjoys the quirkiness of the life that exists in their suite, and she feels its absences with stark, unwelcome clarity. It's something that makes her life a little less bleak, and she's not just going to sit around and let it consume them.

She pokes at Veronica's thigh with her big toe, gaining the younger woman's attention. Cass flashes a small grin that she hopes is reassuring, or at the very least comforting.

"Let him rest. How about we play some card games until he wakes up, huh?"

Veronica looks hesitant, but she offers a tiny smile in response.

"Yeah," she says after a moment longer of thought, nodding. She spares one last glance at Rex, watching the steady rise and fall of the dog's side as he falls so quickly into deeper sleep, before carefully moving away and standing. Her lips stretch into a smile that is more sincere and hopeful. Most of all, it's thankful, and it makes Cass' heart warm. "Yeah, that sounds like fun."

* * *

"This is some _crap_!"

Cass glances up from her hand of yellowing, mismatched cards to raise a questioning brow at Veronica's sudden outburst. The younger woman is fuming over the loss of yet another pile of cards that had been dangerously close to reaching the golden value of 26.

"What?"

"It's crap!" Veronica repeats, casting a suspicious glare at the caravanner. "How many goddamn jacks do you have in your deck?"

Cass laughs as she shuffles through her hand and waggles her brows conspiratorially.

"Quite a damn few."

"I hate this game. I hate you." Despite her bitter words that she does and doesn't really meant, Veronica picks a card at random from her hand – a four of hearts, she likes that card – and places it down where her late pile had been.

Cass' smirk is instantaneous, and also somewhat apologetic, as she whips out a card from the rest in her hand with a flourish and slides it over to Veronica's pile that's sitting pretty at 23. The card is a jack of spades. She nestles it strategically in between the cards in Veronica's pile, so that a good chunk of the value is erased.

"God_dammit_!" Veronica yells, slamming her open palm down sharply against the wood of the table. She points a finger at Cass in warning. "I'm about two seconds from flipping this whole table."

Cass just laughs again. "Alright, alright, don't get your panties in a bunch. I'll ease up on you."

With an unintelligible grumble, Veronica clears out the freshly discarded cards and sets to the task of rebuilding yet another one of her symbolically wrecked caravan bids.

She has no real strategy in this _stupid _game. Many travelers at the trading post had attempted to teach her the rules of the game and the best ways to win, but they all had differing ideas and the game itself was just so confusing that none of it really stuck. She's really just winging it the whole time, but Veronica is still determined to win at least _one_ game in her lifetime.

True to her word, Cass leaves the younger woman's cards at peace, not touching her piles in favor of completing her own.

Four fast turns later, and Cass is gently putting her hand on Veronica's, stopping her from using a much-needed king to double a ten that rests on top of a six. Veronica looks up from the table with a frown, meeting Cass' bemused gaze.

"What?"

"I just won."

Veronica looks to Cass' three piles incredulously. "_What_?"

"Yeah. 26, 26, 26," Cass reads off with a growing grin, pointing at each pile respectively. "That's game, kid."

Veronica stares down at the table in disbelief, comparing her sloppy, lengthy piles with Cass' neat, short ones. She growls, throws her cards down, and angrily swipes both of her hands through the cards on the table, mixing and scattering them until all of the separate piles become one large, messy one made up of a myriad of different cards from different places at different stages of life.

Childish indulgences are never to be denied, in Veronica's brain.

"Oh, come on," Cass chides half-heartedly.

"This is unfair," Veronica insists. "You _ran _a caravan!"

"Veronica, that doesn't even make – that's _stupid_-"

"_You're _stupid!"

Cass rolls her eyes. "Oh, yeah, I remember when _I _was six."

Veronica gasps indignantly and, feeling particularly riled up, opens her mouth to retaliate, but immediately snaps it back shut when she catches sight of Boone walking into the room. Her eyes follow him carefully with cautious attention as he casually opens the fridge that specifically holds their stockpile of beverages.

Cass frowns at the younger woman's sudden change in demeanor, until she follows her gaze. Her eyes widen, just the slightest bit, at the sight of the sniper that she's seen alarmingly little of all day.

"Hey, Boone," she calls, not without some hesitation. The man glances over his shoulder at them.

"Hey." His gaze lands on the bottle of whiskey sits upon the table by Cass' arm. He nods to it. "Did you have any of that?"

With a frown, Cass looks down warily at the quite obviously half-empty bottle. It's her favorite drink, made by her favorite brand, after all; of course she'd had some.

Well, a little more than _some_. A lot of _some_s, really.

"Uh. Yeah."

Boone gives a small laugh. "Oh man," he says with a shake of his head, and with a certain _knowing _that makes Cass' stomach drop. Or maybe it's the whiskey. She eyes it cautiously, betrayed.

"Why?" she asks fearfully. He merely shakes his head again.

"Nothing, it's just – you know, don't worry about it," he assures her as he works to hide his grin and plucks a bottle of water from one of the chilled shelves.

"What does that even _mean_?" Veronica calls desperately, and suddenly her earlier conversation with Arcade about the whole unanswered Fancy Lad thing floats to the forefront of her mind. It remains unanswered when Boone just laughs to himself one last time and leaves.

The two women stare at the offending bottle like it's a time bomb set to blow at any moment.

Cass gives Veronica a wary look, brow furrowed slightly as she slowly pushes her chair back away from the table and stands.

"What do you say you and I spend the day somewhere that's…"

"Not here?" Veronica offers as the older woman trails off with uncertainty. The unspoken goal to get _way the hell away from Boone_ is understood between them and Veronica nods quickly in agreement.

They abandon the messy pile of assorted cards and the potentially tampered-with bottle of whiskey where they sit on the long wooden table for someone else to clean up – probably Arcade, whenever he decides to pull himself away from his _project_. They two quickly and non-conspicuously leave the kitchen and walk out into the foyer, heading over to the elevator. Cass presses the call button three times in quick succession, as though the elevator will detect her impatience and show up faster.

"Using the elevator?"

They both jump a fraction at Boone's voice coming from behind them and whip around. He's leaning back against the closed door of the Courier's room, arms crossed and with a distinct smugness coloring his features.

"No shit, what else would we be doing here?" Cass snaps, more-than-slightly unnerved by the sniper's apparent _interest_.

"I just thought I might warn you," he starts, and then deliberately pauses. He makes a show of thinking, and chooses instead to give them a noncommittal wave and amends, "You know what, never mind."

"Oh my god, stop _doing _that!" Veronica pleads, anxiously wringing her hands through the rough brown fabric of her robes. Boone only raises a brow.

Cass waves him off when the elevator chimes behind them.

"He's bluffing, Veronica, he's just fucking with us," she grumbles, shooting the sniper a glare.

He smirks. "I was just going to tell you-"

"No, fuck you," Cass interrupts, showing him her middle finger as the elevator doors open. "You think you're so goddamn funny with your stupid little mind games. Well, _I'm _not going to sit around here all day to see what else you have-"

"Howdy there!"

"-_fucking hell!_" Both women scream and nearly jump out of their skins when Victor's tinny voice booms cheerfully from the elevator car.

"Might I ask where you lovely gals are headed to on this bea-_yutiful _day?"

They stand there, gaping dumbly with just a trace of terror at the sudden, _loud, _and unexpected appearance of the robot. The Securitron's smiling cowboy flickers and crackles as it stares right back at them, unblinking. The only other sounds that come from it are those of the occasional whirring rotations of its claw-like hands.

Behind them, they can hear Boone quietly laughing to himself. As much as Boone will laugh, anyway.

After a far-too prolonged and _extremely_ uncomfortable silence, Cass slowly reaches into the elevator car, feels around for the panel of buttons, and swipes her hand smoothly down all of them, undoubtedly highlighting each floor that the car will now be visiting thanks to her. The metal doors instantly slide shut, and then Victor is thankfully gone. They can hear the elevator as it whirs up or down the shaft, further and further away from their floor until they're left once more in the silence of the suite.

Veronica spares Cass a bewildered glance, to which the caravanner simply shakes her head.

"I just _really _don't like that robot," she explains with a small shrug of her shoulders, shaking off the last bits of shock.

"I tried to tell you," Boone says, although he doesn't bother to conceal his satisfaction. "He's been watching the elevator all day."

"You," Cass points an accusing finger at the man, "are a little _shit_, but I seriously believe you can do better than some lame mindfuckery. And you," she shifts her gaze to Veronica, still completely confused as to what's going on next to her, "need to be taught how to not _suck_ at Caravan. Come on. We'll avoid this fucker and I'll show you how to play Caravan like a big girl."


	7. Running Hot (Day Six)

**A/N:** HOLY FUCK it's 11:52PM and I just remembered that I had to post this chapter.

* * *

Cass sips at her drink – _her own _concoction this time, good ol' moonshine, with _no _chance of having been tampered with by a certain _sniper_ – as she sits alone at the kitchen table with her feet propped up on the smooth wooden surface. She stares absently at the dark red and black-patterned wallpaper that wraps all around the room, admiring how good the quality is. She's never seen wallpaper look so neat and not-peely, and she quickly realizes that that's probably the most _boring _thought she's ever had the displeasure of thinking.

She needs something to _do_, damn it.

After spending nearly a week with little to no real activity, even the exclusive nature and luxurious surroundings of the Lucky 38's presidential suite have begun to lose their shiny appeal. There's only so much pool one can play, only so many rooms one can lounge in, and only so much of being cooped up with three other people, a robot, and a dog that one can take before they start to get just a tiny bit… antsy.

Naturally, she settles for the drink, which still remains her oldest friend and constant comfort in any and all trying times.

Cass is straddling the border between _tipsy _and _drunk_, and she starts considering new kinds of mixes she could try out in the future – maybe testing them out by sharing them with the Courier when the damned woman _finally _comes back – when she feels something slimy stroking along the back of her hand.

She jumps and yanks her hand back, as though it's been burned. On the floor next to her chair, Rex peers up at her with big devastatingly hopeful eyes, tongue darting out to give her one last tentative lick when she slowly lets her hand fall again. His tail wags with uncertainty.

She indulges the dog with a small, lopsided smile and scratches at the underside of his jaw. "I get it, now that I'm not wearing my hat we're suddenly _best friends_."

His movements quickly become more excited, more certain with the more attention she gives him, and he leans his head down and uses the tip of his nose to nudge an object on the floor to roll closer to her.

"What's this?" she questions despite herself, reaching down to grab it. It's made of an extremely faded and dirtied green felt, and it's slimy, obviously covered in dog spit from having been carried in Rex's mouth for however long he's had it. Cass grimaces as she turns it around in her grip, examining it with a critical eye. "Where did you find a ball? Who _let _you find a ball?"

Rex simply gives her an energetic bark in response, his whole body wiggling as he furiously wags his tail in anticipation. Never once do his eyes leave the ball.

"You're bored too, huh? I can relate to that," she tells him, throwing all of her reservations regarding _talking _to a _dog _to the wind because _fuck it_, she's drunk and bored. She tosses the ball up in the air experimentally, and immediately lets out a sharp yelp in surprise when Rex all but leaps onto her with his front legs to snatch the ball between his teeth.

"Ow, shit," she complains, pushing him off and rubbing at her stinging thighs. "Robot toes are just as bad as regular dog toes."

The ball is deposited in Cass' lap, streaking her jeans with saliva and making her grimace again. Rex just watches her expectantly.

She sighs and throws the ball up in the air again, but this time further away from where she's sitting. As Rex leaps in the air to try to grab it, Cass wipes futilely at the dark, wet marks on her legs with distaste. She looks back up just in time to see the dog picking the ball up from where it had landed and rolled into a corner. He spins around as soon as he has it to run it back to her with vigor.

The long, hard stare she gives the dog goes completely unnoticed; he's far more interested in the ball, watching it with an unfaltering gaze. He begins whining lowly when she makes no move to even touch it, and eventually goes so far as to bark at her in protest.

"Alright, alright," Cass relents after shushing him. When she picks the slobbery ball up, Rex nearly loses his goddamn mind, even attempting to jump up and nip at her hands to take it from her. She gives him a quick and sharp _tsk _and takes her sweet time having a deep swig of her moonshine. The burning trail it leaves as it slides down her throat is satisfying beyond belief. She turns the ball around in her hand.

"You wanna play?" She feels the familiar creeping of heat seeping slowly to her face, a telltale sign of a blooming inebriated blush. It only serves to make her grin crookedly in delight. "Then let's play."

* * *

"It's multiplying on the outside, but I'm pretty sure that it's not lethally aggressive towards other organisms anymore, not like it was when it spread through Vault 22. X-rays haven't produced anything concrete yet, but at this rate – in the human subjects, at least – some sort of blockage in the lungs would have begun to make itself apparent almost immediately. Say, wheezing or coughing or just breathing problems in general." Arcade watches the small black rat in the containment unit skitter around – as much as she can with her healing bite wounds – and smiles. "Of course, it's a bit too early to tell, I'll have to wait for another two or three weeks, but she seems to be fine so far. I'd almost expect the process to happen sooner, really, given how much smaller a rat is compared to a human, so I'm… hopeful, to say the least."

Veronica nods along with his words and stares dumbly at the rat. She realizes that Arcade is now simply staring at her, waiting for some sort of response.

"So…does she have a name?"

He raises a brow at her. "That's all you can think of?"

"I don't know what else to say!" the woman defends. "This is your activity; I'm just along for the ride." Rex barks again from somewhere else in the suite, but they both ignore it. Veronica nods at the rat. "So, does she?"

"I never thought to name her."

"You introduce the poor thing to some potentially deadly spores and you don't even have the decency to give her a name? Rude, Gannon. Poor form."

"I have no defense against that," he admits with a laugh. "She was just a 'present' from Rex, and I saw an opportunity."

The rat's tiny pink nose and soft-looking ears twitch as she sniffs around and listens to their voices through the barrier of the isolation unit. She reaches up with a hind leg and scratches at the back of her head, a frantic, jerky movement that is slightly hindered by the stained bandages wrapped around her middle.

Of course Arcade is sympathetic to the small creature; he'd found her not three days before, just barely hanging onto life as she bled out on the floor of the foyer. She'd been grabbed with sharp canine teeth and carried to rest at the Courier's door, undoubtedly Rex's idea of a present to his ever-absent master. Arcade had cradled her gently as he picked her up and set to wrapping her up in an attempt to stop the bleeding. The rat had calmed down considerably when he left her small bits of chopped up carrot and a bowl of water, even letting him stroke at her tiny head. He'd also done well to make sure that Rex wasn't able to catch sight of her, for fear that he might try to attack her again and finish her off for good.

The idea to use the rat as a test subject is not his proudest, but he required a live specimen of some sort. That, paired with his faith in his hypothesis, made him decide that perhaps the rat was exactly what he needed.

"Eliza," Veronica says suddenly, still watching the rat. "I just decided."

"You want to name her Eliza?" Arcade asks with a small laugh, glancing down at Veronica. "You must _really_ like that musical."

"It's a story about a woman that learns to be all fancy and dresses up and stuff, what more do you want from me?"

"Fair enough. Eliza it is."

Their attention is torn from watching the rat do her rat things when suddenly an old tennis ball bounces into the room, followed shortly by a lively and bounding Rex. The dog runs in with so much determination and force that he nearly knocks Veronica over with a small squeak – luckily, Arcade is close enough and quick enough that he's able to quickly put his hands on her shoulders from behind to steady her out and prevent her from falling onto him.

They watch, bewildered, as Rex hunts for the ball, which had rolled underneath one of the beds. He switches between growling and whining, desperately pawing at the floor to try to wiggle his body underneath the wooden frame.

Cass walks in and spares the dog only a glance before she starts snorting.

"Oh man, I was wrong about that dog," she laughs, putting a hand out on the desk to steady her sluggish and unsteady movements. "He's a _lot_ of fun."

Arcade eyes the unmarked bottle clutched in her other hand warily. "You're playing drunk fetch with the dog _indoors_?"

The caravanner rolls her eyes, a more exaggerated motion than usual since she's on her way to being blind-ass drunk. "Oh, come _on_," she says, dragging out the last word with a whine. "It's boring as _hell _around here, what else to you expect me to do?"

"Oh, I don't know," he retorts, crossing his arms with a slight frown, "_not_ play drunk fetch with the dog indoors? Where there's people," he gestures to Veronica, "and things", he gestures to his experimentation area, "that can be _knocked over_?"

"Don't you scold me, _doctor man_," Cass growls, taking one final drink before roughly setting her bottle down on the desk, next to the containment unit. Veronica makes a dismayed sound when the rat, Eliza, jumps and gives a fearful squeak, running about with nowhere to hide from the loud noises and rattling surfaces.

"You're killing my buzz," the redhead continues, still completely oblivious to the presence of the rat, as she staggers over to where Rex is still painstakingly working to retrieve his ball. She gets down onto the floor and crawls under the bed, grabbing it herself and then standing to taunt the dog with his prize.

Rex jumps and snaps at the ball whenever it comes near, but even Cass' drunken reflexes are able to keep it away from him, making him bark and whine like he's prone to do when he's denied access to a new toy. The caravanner laughs heartily at the dog's desperation.

"Watch this," she tells Arcade and Veronica with a grin. Before Arcade can stop her, the ball is flying out of her hand, sailing across the too-small room. It bounces hard off of the wall and comes right back towards them. Veronica is just barely able to dodge it as it goes flying past her and back out into the foyer, but she isn't able to get out of the way of Rex, who runs after the ball with an almost violent determination.

The dog barrels into her, and Arcade isn't able to catch her like he had before; she falls onto the desk behind her, knocking the containment unit loose and sending it, the sample, Eliza, and Cass' bottle to the floor. Rex simply shakes the collision off and continues running after the ball, knocking down Arcade's UV light on the way out.

The three of them stand in silent shock, staring at the mess that had been the experiment setup. More importantly, they stare at the shattered Petri dish, bathed in the light of the fallen UV lamp.

"Oh my god, that's that contagious shit, isn' it?" Cass slurs as her eyes go wide. She watches as every particle of the spores floating in the air and on the floor is highlighted by the deep purple light. Behind the wall of drunkenness, her panic begins to rise as she realizes the danger of the situation. She lets out a shout when some of the particles float close to her, looking to Arcade with wild eyes. "Do somethin'!"

The doctor makes a mindless gesticulation towards the mess. "There's not much I can do, but I don't think-"

"I'm not gonna _die _with lungs full of hitchhiking _plants_!" Cass shouts. She pushes past Arcade and reaches down under the desk, grabbing for the small flamethrower she remembers the doctor storing under there in case of this exact emergency.

"Cass, _no_!" Arcade reaches out to swipe the weapon from her hands, but she refuses to relent as she shouts curses at him and tries to aim the nozzle at the makeshift lab area. "You're _drunk_, for god's sake, _give that to me _-"

On the floor, Veronica scrambles to find Eliza as the other two continue to fight over the flamethrower. She finds the rat just in the doorway of the room, contemplating scurrying out and possibly catching Rex's attention as opposed to staying in the room with the angry and loud humans. Veronica takes the opportunity to grab the rat, despite the immediate jerking and wiggling it causes, and sticks the creature within one large brown sleeve before crawling away from the line of (literal) fire.

"Screw _off_, Gannon!" Cass yells, finally using all of her strength to bodily push Arcade back. She sends him toppling to the floor, where he lands on his back with enough force that it temporarily knocks the breath out of his lungs. He hears a dangerous click and wheezes out more words of threat and caution, but they go ignored by the angry, frightened caravanner.

The roar and glare of flames fills the small room as Cass completely torches the entire desk with a loud, continuous yell, setting the whole thing aflame. The spilled moonshine is ignited quickly, only serving to make the fire flare more and spread faster. She wobbles on her drunken feet – she's given only a small amount of clarity through the haze of the alcohol due to the _giant line of flame _pouring from the nozzle of the flamethrower she holds – and aims wildly around in the air to get rid of any floating spores there might be.

"Kill it!" she yells, sweeping the flamethrower from side to side. "Kill it with fire!"

She doesn't stop until she's knocked off of her feet by Arcade, who forcibly tackles her to the ground and is quick to yank the flamethrower away from her and turn it off. She snarls at him as he sits on her abdomen and holds her struggling arms over her head, yelling words she can't understand over the _crackles_ and _pops_ of the steadily growing desk-fire that glows behind him.

Standing hurriedly and stumbling in the face of the growing fire, Veronica eyes the rising trails of smoke that lick at the ceiling – and the smoke detector that rests there.

"Guys, I think-"

Almost immediately the fire alarm begins wailing, loud and piercing. The two struggling on the floor look up at the shrieking alarm just in time to be doused by the room's subsequently-activated sprinklers, which still work for some _amazing _reason that they won't question for the time being. Water sprays down from the sprinklers, slowly soaking them, their clothing, and anything within a certain radius. Luckily for them, the fire is a part of that radius, and it's steadily dwindled down to smaller flames, and then eventually to nothing at all.

In the wake of the fire, a charred-beyond-repair desk and containment unit is left behind, along with a slightly blackened terminal and UV lamp. Arcade silently hopes that the terminal will still be functional, but pushes his own concerns to the back of his mind when he hears the elevator _ding _in the other room.

"The fire alarm has been activated on this floor," a metallic voice recites from the foyer. "Please remain calm and evacuate the floor."

Arcade carefully – yet quickly – removes himself from Cass, whose face is beet red with anger. She stands up almost too fast with a growl, but ignores him in favor of listening to the voice. They leave the guest room to warily pad out into the foyer and find a Securitron waiting at the door of the elevator.

"The fire alarm has been activated on this floor," the Securitron repeats. "Please remain calm and evacuate the floor."

"I, uh," Arcade starts, sparing a glance at the wet, smoking room, "I think it's been taken care of."

"Please remain calm and evacuate the floor."

The three look at each other in confusion, until Veronica shrugs and steps into the elevator, clutching her sleeve. Arcade sighs and follows her, whistling for Rex, who comes bounding over without a care in the world and with his ball gripped between his teeth. They look expectantly at Cass.

"I don' like him," she says, glaring at the robot. Arcade rolls his eyes.

"This isn't Victor, Cass," he tells her patiently. "They won't leave us alone until we go, though."

She mumbles unintelligibly under her breath, but listens and stumbles into the elevator car with them. The metal doors close slowly, and then they're heading down, presumably to the casino floor.

In another random moment of clarity, Cass glances around the car with a frown.

"Where're Boone and the orb?" she asks.

"They left a couple of hours ago," Veronica says, not without some amount of envy tingeing her voice. She really should have gone with them, wherever they went.

"Where the hell does he keep going," Cass grumbles, although she quickly realizes that she doesn't really care as soon as the words leave her mouth.

The elevator hits its destination with a rough jerk, and the doors open again to reveal that they are indeed on the main floor of the casino. When they all step out, they turn to the Securitron expectantly, but it only stares back at them before the doors close again and it's gone.

"Well, that was odd," Veronica comments, carefully gripping her sleeve. Arcade hums distractedly, turning towards Cass with crossed arms.

"What the _fuck_ were you thinking?" he asks angrily. He then scoffs and throws his arms up in the air. "Who am I kidding, you clearly weren't thinking at _all_!"

"I was thinkin' that I didn' want to _die_!" Cass yells, skipping past any confrontational build-up. The alcohol in her system is enough build-up for her, coloring her face red and making her fingers twitch in violent anticipation. "No thanks to _you_!"

"That doesn't mean you can just _torch the room_!" he shouts back, waving his arms at her. "Besides, I was trying to tell you that I don't think-"

"Maybe if you had a better plan-"

"Guys-," Veronica starts gently, touching each of their arms only for them to shake her off and ignore her.

"Well, maybe if _you_ weren't such a _drunk_-"

"Hey," Cass growls, waving a finger of warning in his face as they slowly gravitate closer to each other, "You shut your _fucking _mouth."

"Why, because you know it's true?" Arcade shoots back bitterly. Normally he isn't one for altercations, but he is _more than _pissed off with the entire situation. "You know that your drinking nearly _burned down_ the only place we can really call _home_?"

Cass snatches him by the collar of his shirt and raises her fist, surprised when she sees Arcade do the same to her. She snarls. "You _motherfucker_ -"

"What the _hell_ is going on here?"

They freeze, only seconds away from trading fists, and gape in the direction of the sudden, unexpected voice. From the darkened entrance to the casino emerge three figures; Boone, ED-E, and the Courier.

At the bewildered expression on the Courier's face, Arcade's grip on Cass' collar quickly loosens and he backs away. He lowers his head with an odd sense of shame, like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't be doing.

"You're, uh," Arcade stutters, mouth gaping like a fish's for a moment as he collects his thoughts. "You're home early."

"They're doing wonders with medicine these days," the Courier muses as she comes closer, looking over her soaking friends with their disheveled appearances and slightly blackened clothes.

"Gannon's bein' a dick," Cass accuses, much to Arcade's chagrin. He glares at her, but chooses to say nothing.

"They're both being dicks," Veronica corrects, still fiddling with her sleeve. She grips an object inside and slowly manages to coax it out.

The Courier's confused frown melts when she sees the rat. "Who's this?"

"Eliza," Veronica tells her with a grin. "Arcade's current test subject, my new friend."

The Courier blinks. "What in the _world_ did I miss?" she asks with a small, wavering laugh. She looks to the other two for explanation, but they only shrug. Arcade isn't even sure where to begin, let alone explaining that the rat is still technically a total danger to them on the off-chance that the spores _are _contagious (even though he's still _certain _that they aren't). He doesn't even know how to broach the subject that the Courier is going to find a charred, smoking mess in the suite when she goes up.

_What a great 'Welcome Home From Your Concussion' present_, he thinks.

One of the Securitrons in the large room jerks and makes an odd buzzing noise, and then its screen is changing with various flickers and fuzzes. It goes from the default face to that of a familiar cowboy before it rolls up to them.

"Good to see ya again, partner!" Victor chirps in his lazy drawl. "I hate to be a bother, but the boss would like to speak to ya right quick. Best to not keep him waiting!"

"Oh," the Courier mumbles, slightly disappointed at being summoned so soon after her return. She touches the white bandages around her forehead. "Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll go right now."

She reaches to press the call button, but Victor is quick to beat her to it. She thanks him quietly and waits for the elevator to show up.

Arcade bites his lip as he watches her, unsure of whether or not he should wait to tell her about the state that the guest room of the suite is in. He doesn't think he can adequately explain the _hows _and _whys _of the whole situation in 30 seconds, but he thinks that maybe he should give her _some _sort of crash-course warning before she goes back.

He doesn't get a chance to decide. When the elevator comes back to the ground floor, and she steps inside, she gives them a smile and a small wave.

Right as the doors are closing, Cass shouts, "We burned down the suite!"

"You _w__hat_?" is all that the Courier is able to yell in complete shock, before the doors are closed on her.

* * *

Boone stares openly at the three of them, taking in their soaked appearances with less confusion and far more amusement than the Courier had. He raises a brow in a silent question. Arcade sighs.

"Small fire," he explains. "The Securitrons made us come down here."

"That doesn't explain how it happened."

"Cass is drunk," Veronica states as she settles Eliza back into her sleeve and jerks a thumb at the irritated caravanner, as though that's all the explanation required.

"Hey! I was _bored_," Cass says, opening her arms wide in defense. "I've spent too long just _sitting _up there, it's not my fault!"

Boone only nods slowly, thoughtfully. "So why didn't you leave?"

The three turn to him fully with matching frowns. Arcade blinks.

"Why didn't we…," he trails off, before something clicks in his head. He remembers all the times in the evenings when Boone had just disappeared into the elevator, and how none of them had bothered to question him as he'd left. Arcade purses his lips. "Is that what _you_ did?"

"Yeah," Boone says with a shrug, like it's the simplest, most obvious thing in the world. In a way, it is, and it makes Arcade wonder why he'd never really considered it as an option. "I went to go visit her. Got some air. You guys could have easily done the same."

There's a moment of silence as they all realize that yes, they very well could have easily done the same. Veronica shoots Arcade a curious frown.

"Why _didn't _we do that, Arcade?"

Arcade can do no more than shrug in response.

* * *

A heavy sigh filters through the speakers of the giant monitor, much like that of a weary parent scolding an oblivious toddler.

"Do I even _want _to know what your little _friends _did that caused the fire alarm to be triggered?"

The Courier stands before the giant screen with House's face plastered on it and seems to seriously consider the question. Eventually, she simply shrugs and gives him a small, apologetic, smile, despite the fact that she herself still doesn't know what exactly happened.

"What can I say?" she replies with a laugh, followed by a sigh of her own. "Six days cramped up together without me gave them a little bit of the ol' cabin fever."

* * *

A/N: Thank you so much for reading!


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